After 55 years, The Gift and Art Shop in Memphis is closing

Katherine Mistilis (left) and Jennifer Krutchen shop the final sales at Gift and Art, a popular gift store on Poplar, which is closing its doors.

Vicki Simmons stood in the narrow aisle, china plate in hand, and reminisced about the East Memphis gift shop she says "kind of paralleled" her life.

"I discovered Gift and Art Shop when I was at Ole Miss and started buying gifts on my own for my friends," Simmons, 59, a lifelong Memphian, said. "Then it progressed as friends started getting married, and they would be registered and I bought gifts here." Then came baby gifts and special occasion presents. "Gift and Art has always been there and kind of paralleled the needs as I was sojourning through life."

Not anymore. After 55 years, The Gift and Art Shop, the store in the expanded brick house at 4704 Poplar that helped outfit the china cabinets of generations of brides and sold baby gifts for babies who now have babies and grandbabies of their own, is closing. Everything, including inventory, furniture, fixtures and file cabinets, is being sold.

Owner Evelyn McGuire, whose mother, Mary Brown, started the store at that location in 1957, said she's feeling "sad, very sad."

McGuire said she had decided to sell the store, which sold fine china, crystal, flatware and specialty gifts, because she remarried and wanted to spend more time with her husband and son. She said she learned on Christmas Eve that the buyer was unable to go through with the sale.

No tenant has been signed up to go in the space yet, said Cecil Humphreys Jr., who represents Poplar Corridor Partners, L.P., the owners of the property.

The sign announcing that the store would close and everything must go, went up on Wednesday, and by Thursday evening, many shelves were showing bare spots, as customers came to buy the upscale merchandise at 40 percent off, and in many cases, to pay their respects to the store and the staff.

"We've had so many emails that they are going to miss us and how much we meant to their lives," McGuire said of her customers. "They were like family to us. Our customers were people we knew, we knew their children, we'd seen the grandmothers, the daughters and the grandchildren all come through and get married."

Jeanne Ayres, the bookkeeper, said it's "just really neat" seeing customers, some of whom have been married 30 years or more, come in asking for their bridal registry cards, "because we have them from 1957 on." Ayres has worked at the shop more than 25 years, and her mother, brother and daughter also worked in the store through the years.

McGuire said she doesn't know how long the closing sale will last, and would love to see someone come in and buy the place. "They'd get fixtures and a place and start up, if they could work out a lease."

Friday morning, customers were at the door before opening time at 10 a.m., and by 10:20 the parking lot was full.

"People have been so sweet," McGuire said. "I've gotten so many hugs. There've been a little tears. They've just said, 'you're a part of our lives.'"